Arresting Developments… In Boxing

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

An opinion piece from the only Donald worth listening to…

Full Stop – In British English grammar a full stop is a lengthy pause, in the US, you call it a period. In the UK that tends to suggest feminine products. Here it means a period of time where I look at something in boxing in a little more depth. I am typing from my perspective of a fan who watches the sport closely. It’s an opinion. It is my opinion. Don’t like it? There are other opinions out there but if you don’t like it then good, debate and democracy are a good thing. If you do like it, feel free to spread the word.

Arresting Developments…

According to the UK Boxing trade paper, Boxing News, arrests of senior boxing figures may be inevitable. There is a thread on Twitter from over a year ago that shows some well-known faces who they may be referencing. And in this very month two arrests in Spain show that there are nets closing in.

A number of years ago, I was asked to cover a boxing event and the website for whom I was writing suggested that I don’t go, because they had heard there were gangster links to the company behind it – MGM. I was honest and said I had heard nothing, not being naïve but just being honest. As it turned out, it increasingly looks like they were right. I was hardly surprised. Anyone with an ounce of understanding of the boxing game can put the mafia with Sonny Liston and the Kray brothers with the sport in the 1960s.

Boxing, with its connection to violence, and its need for fighters with hardy reputations, attracts people who have their own “connections”.

But now, right now, global boxing is facing the possibility that the money is tainted, their reputations dodgy and the fights being made have dirty fingers in their pies.

The major focus is on an alleged Irish drug cartel, headed by the now reclusive Daniel Kinahan.

It all exploded at a weigh in, in Dublin where Kinahan attended but got away before the excitement, as there were guns produced by alleged gangsters out to kill him. They failed, but from that point until Katy Taylor’s homecoming this year, professional boxing was effectively banned in Ireland.

Early on in June 2023, Liam Byrne and Jack Kavanagh felt the weight of a police officer’s hand on their shoulders in a Mallorca restaurant and at Malaga Airport respectively and both have been detained. It is alleged that Byrne is a senior member of the Kinahan criminal cartel and Jack is a member of the family. Photographs of both being led away in handcuffs have done the media rounds. At that weigh in, at the Regency Hotel, Liam Byrne lost his brother who was killed in the attack.

The Kinahan cartel are a wanted organization as the Irish authorities, the UK National Crime Agency and the US Government want information which would lead to convictions. Daniel Kinahan, now in the Middle East, is reportedly in hiding and hardly leaves his apartment.

But there are plenty who claim he still has a hand in the boxing business. In fact, there are many who claim his involvement in the Middle East packages being prepared for boxers globally to come and take advantage of, are clear for all to see.

Amazon Prime have even made a documentary all about the rise of the family – The Celtic Cartel.

Their alleged criminal activities aside, it is the sport of boxing which has issues with which it has to face. Prominent boxers were part of the MGM, which morphed into MTK, and have publicly defended Daniel Kinahan. They have described him in glowing terms and MGM/MTK, initially fronted by former world champion Mathew Macklin had a tremendous reputation for representing boxers. It seemed to operate an interesting approach and when Carl Frampton appeared in court in his dispute with the McGuigan’s it was revealed he was paying MTK nothing to look after his interests.
It all seemed odd, but for MTK, it did not appear unusual. They also put together a very impressive knockout competition with a mega contract for fighters at the end of it all.

But now, MTK is history, and the big question, is, has the money it ploughed into the sport, been completely lost or is it still swilling around?

Now, I have no idea as to whether the Kinahans are gangsters or gun runners, drug lords or nursery schoolteachers but the influence of the man at their head, Daniel, is undoubted. Billy Joe Saunders, Tyson Fury, Josh Taylor and Sunny Edwards have testified to it. Respected Guardian journalist, Donald McCrae has now done more than alluded to it. He has stated that Daniel’s name keeps coming up and he is back in the boxing business.

Whilst I do have issues around any sport being bought over by Middle East money – golf – or seduced into moving when it as its premium tournament – soccer – or given spectacular opportunities to race in the cool air of an evening – Formula One – there is little doubt that money talks. But it has to be speaking to the right people, the influential members of each sporting business. That needs promoters and manager to buy in. With the proposed mega fights with the top 4 heavyweights – Wilder, Usyk, Fury and Joshua – in the pipeline and the signing of Usyk to a Middle East management company, the connections within the Middle East which boasts (sic) a dreadful human rights record is bad enough. Adding to that, the possible influence of a man who is on a no-fly list for the US and wanted by two western police forces for questioning, questions the role that sport has in making the bad, look good. If Boxing News is right and there shall be arrests made of major boxing figures, this could be a crisis like no other. At a time when we are seeing the rise and rise of the sport globally, it would be a monumental shame – but more than that: it would be a criminally negligent piece of mismanagement that does not truly know a parallel.

Suddenly 2023, looks like a fascinating year ahead…

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